THE MARINE FOSSILS FROM SANTA MARIA ISLAND: AN HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

In the Azores, Santa Maria is the only island with a sedimentary cover in a nine island volcanic system. This southeast most island of the archipelago has a rich fossil record, dated to the Late Miocene-Early Pliocene and to the Pleistocene. Palaeontological investigations on the island started in the late nine-teen century. Nevertheless, through the next 150 years, the number of publica-tions and thus the attention given to the fossil record of Santa Maria shows con-siderable fluctuation over time. From the beginning, the Miocene-Pliocene outcrops, more numerous in the island, focused the attention of the scholars. Recently, however, the interest has shifted to the Pleistocene outcrops. Data obtained from these outcrops has been used extensively in the inter-pretation and discussion of the Azorean geological genesis and evolution, par-ticularly of Santa Maria, the oldest island of the archipelago. However, its role in the interpretation and discussion of the origin and subsequent evolution of insular marine communities has been meagre